Zainab, Fatema, and I are related through our parents — Zainab’s mother, Fatema’s father, and my mother — who are siblings. Nani dubbed us the Secret Cousins’ Club for the way that we used to huddle, whispering our secrets to one another. We don’t have any other girl cousins close in age, so it was just us.
Fatema was born in mid-May, Zainab in July, then me — trailing by a month — in August. It was as though our mothers had been on a synchronized procreation schedule never again replicated. I am the only “only” amongst the three of us; Fatema has an older sister and Zainab has two elder brothers, each three years apart.
When we were babies, Tasnim Maasi and Mom dropped Zainab and me off at Nani’s for three hours every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday afternoon. Fatema was already there, because her family lived with Nani until Fatema was eight years old.
At the door, our mothers socialized for a few minutes and then all three rushed away to complete their shopping or errands. Mom told me that she nearly always returned home to nap.
I don’t know how Nani coped with three of us still in diapers. Perhaps a servant helped. I cannot recall the earlier days, but I have snippets of memories from later. Nani would greet us in Gujarati with a jolly, “Welcome to the Secret Cousins’ Club.” There were sweets, and dollies, and lots of spots for hide-and-seek in that magical flat.
We spent our preschool years together, and after my family emigrated when I was four years old, we exchanged weekly blue airmail letters that often took a month to arrive, our questions, answers, and news shuffled and stale before reaching their destinations.
We let go of letter-writing when affordable long-distance telephone plans were introduced. Later we switched to email, then Skype and text. But we are busy, and so much of our communication is through Facebook, each of us peeking into one another’s lives, liking and commenting. I sometimes wonder why we don’t more regularly text the way we do with our nearby friends and family, especially now that it’s all free. Maybe we’re used to the geographical distance creating a barrier, have grown accustomed to being apart.
On social media, I’m the opposite of Zainab; while I use my birth surname in life, I’ve hidden behind Murtuza’s on Facebook so that my students won’t find me. The choice is sometimes disorienting; how can I be Mrs. Tyebji when I am Sharifa Bandukwala? Perhaps now that I’m no longer in the classroom, I might be able to return to my real name again. But then maybe not; Facebook is still a touchy subject for Murtuza and he might read more into it than I’d want.
Fatema took a good deal of cajoling to join Facebook, citing her growing reputation as a businesswoman. Of course, when she heard about it in 2006, she put her marketing people on it and her publishing house was one of the first in the world to advertise there, but she didn’t create a personal account until 2010, as “Fat Ema.” In the beginning, her posts reminded me of her teen self: interspecies love stories (the dog and the elephant, the donkey-cow pair) and jokes with a hint of political satire. But over the last couple of years, everything has centred on feminist issues.
Most recently, her energy has turned to reports about depressing things like female genital mutilation. I’d heard about it in the news, but before her posts I had no idea anyone practised it in India, let alone in our Dawoodi Bohra community. It seems borderline racist now, but I’d assumed it was an African thing; all the previous media stories I’d read focused on Egypt or Sudan or Kenya.
Today’s article is a confessional, written anonymously by a woman who lives in Mumbai. I presume that her family hails from a small village. Hers is a horrible narrative about being taken, at age seven, to get “khatna” done, and only realizing it later, when she was in her thirties. “I’ll never forget the pain, it was the worst I’d ever felt.” I skim another paragraph, close the article, and click “like,” a not-quite-appropriate reaction, under Fatema’s post.
I turn off the computer and head to the basement laundry room to find our luggage. One by one, I haul three large suitcases up the narrow wooden steps and then up to the second floor.
“How does one pack for eight months away?” I ask Mom, over the phone.
“Lightly,” she jokes, her way of letting me know that I’m taking the task too seriously.
“Right.”
“But seriously, you’ll be staying a few blocks from Zainab’s and Tasnim’s flats,” she reasons. “You can take your dirty clothing there twice a week and a servant will launder everything for you. You’ll buy anything else you need.”
“We’ll have our own washing machine.”
“And a dryer?”
“I don’t think so.”
“You’re going to have to hang your clothes on a line. We did that when we first came here, in the summer. When we had little money and needed to save electricity.” Her tone is wistful, almost romantic.
We say goodbye and I head to Zee’s bedroom. She needs a full school year’s worth of second-grade curriculum and supplies. Once the workbooks and her pencil case are in her suitcase, she and I lay everything else on her single bed that she cannot live without for half a year: five everyday outfits, two special-occasion dresses, three pairs of shoes, a handful of favourite storybooks, and Ronald, her stuffed raccoon. The pile is much smaller than I’d imagined.
“That’s all, Zee?”
“I think so.” She’s approaching this interruption to her routines with an attitude as casual as her grandmother’s; the only reassurances she’s needed are the promises that she will Skype weekly with Elena and rejoin her classmates in time for her late April birthday.
“Is there anything you want to put out of sight for when Su-Lin stays here?” She’s the three-year-old daughter of the visiting academics who’ll be renting our place and feeding our turtle.
“Like what?”
“I dunno, any toys or stuffies you don’t want her to play with?”
She does a slow pirouette, scanning her room. “Nah. She’ll feel more at home if all the toys are here, right? I’m getting too old for most of them, anyway.”
Later, Murtuza and I continue packing. We’re taking Mom’s advice to carry one large suitcase each. We lay them out on the bed. His is navy blue and scuffed, and mine is pink and nearly new.
“We’re a heterosexual stereotype, aren’t we?” I shake my head.
“I’ll trade you. I like pink.” He tosses a pair of slacks in my bag. I refold them and place them in his suitcase.
“I’ll keep mine. It has all these meshed compartments.” I point out the bag’s features, but I’ve already lost interest in my own argument.
“Do I need a suit?” Murtuza stares into the closet.
“Yeah. We’ll probably be invited to a couple of weddings. And take a saya kurta in case it’s an orthodox one. I’m taking my two ridas with me.”
“Oh god,” he groans, “we’re going to have to go to a beardwala event at some point.” He frisbees a topi, the pillbox-style skullcap Bohra men wear, into his bag.
“Murti! You shouldn’t say beardwala!” I wag my finger at him.
“Is topiwala or ridawala better?” He raises an eyebrow at me.